seventies

Matching Sisters

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

In continuing my California wildfires-inspired photo scanning project, I’m seeing another theme emerge: matching sisters.

I have just one sibling, a younger sister, and my mother loved to put us in matching outfits, many of which she sewed herself.

I’m giving my mother an A++ for the extraordinary effort it took to not only make some of our clothing, but to have the two outfits clean on the same day and get us both to agree to wear them. You must admit, we looked very cute and were a big hit when out in public.

Unless you had hippie parents, this was a common thing for girls in the late 60s and early 70s. Sisters matched. I don’t remember boys being put in matching outfits, but maybe some were.

To be honest, my sister and I are not close and have not been for many years. We are extremely different people. I don’t know if being seen as a “set” of girls from a young age had a negative impact or not. I know there was a certain expectation that I would set an example for her. And as you may have heard, oldest daughters tend towards perfectionism, which probably isn’t fun for the ones who come after.

But darn it, we were cute.

Christmas 1969
June 1971 (these may have been dance recital costumes)
November 1972 (sometimes our outfits were similar, but not identical)
Here we are with our close family friends who happened to have boys. They were never in matching outfits.

Candy cookies

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

I’m not sure when cookies with pieces of candy in them were invented, but I feel like they got very popular when I was a kid in the 70s. In fact, I’m just going to go ahead and claim them for GenX. We may not have invented candy cookies, but we sure made them very popular.

I fondly remember my first “hidden treasure” cookie—a powdered sugar-covered cookie ball with a Hershey’s Kiss in the center. My mom made those every Christmas. And remember those first M&M cookies? Those were my second favorite type of Mrs. Fields cookies to get warm at the mall.

As every American who has ever trick-or-treated knows, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the best mass-produced candy in the US, which of course leads to numerous recipes which incorporate them.

These Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cookies (recipe from Sally’sBakingAddiction.com) are perfect because you sink the candies into the hot cookies and then put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes to prevent too much of the chocolate melting. This results in the perfect integration of candy and cookie. The cookie dough itself has peanut butter in it and is rolled in granulated sugar before baking. It elevates the already perfect peanut butter cup to a whole new level.

As my son says, these are FIRE.

This batch of cookies officially concludes my 2024 Christmas Baking Extravaganza, which may or may not have been partially motivated by election-related escapism. I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Fortunately, my son has been home to help eat all these cookies.

Related posts:

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

More White Chocolate

The Holiday Spritz

Wild Kingdom

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments

The chickens next door are attracting this guy:

I considered my chicken problem solved when I vanquished the annoying rooster last year, but now I have a coyote problem. I was actually scared to walk home yesterday because this fellow was standing on my sidewalk, not at all concerned about being out in broad daylight. To get home, I would’ve had to walk within 30 feet of him. I called my husband to come pick me up in the car.

He clearly wants to eat one of the chickens next door, who periodically roam freely in our yard. Frankly, I’d love to see it. I keep looking out my window waiting for my Wild Kingdom moment, but it hasn’t happened yet.

If I had small children or pets, I’d probably be Karening this situation by now. I would’ve had the Board of Health over here (again) to complain about the chickens attracting coyotes. But I don’t, so I’m just going to wait and see what happens.

GenX, let me know if you remember watching “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” on Sunday nights with your family. I think it was the first show to introduce us to both the beauty and the brutality of the animal kingdom. Some of those lion takedowns were epic. It showed us that predator-prey relationships are just part of nature.

Charm Bracelet

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

Back in the 70s, charm bracelets were a common gift for girls. Typically girls got the bracelet with one or two “charms” as a first gift and then additional charms for birthdays and Christmases ever after.

Charms were little silver representations of some hobby or activity that the girl liked to do.

I loved my charm bracelet. I have kept it in a box in my closet for decades now. It lives with a bunch of other sentimental jewelry that I no longer wear, but cannot part with.

I recently bought some of those tiny silver polishing cloths to shine up some old jewelry and decided to clean my charm bracelet.

As we very eagerly await the birth of my granddaughter sometime within the next two weeks, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to show it to her and tell her about the meaning of all the charms.

There are 17 charms on my bracelet. Most represent things that were important to me as a child and teenager.

Counterclockwise from 1 o’clock:

  1. Santa’s sleigh (I loved Christmas!)
  2. An upright piano, just like the one I played
  3. A Camp Fire Girls 5-years charm (I had forgotten how important the CFG were to me)
  4. A set of silver bells (not sure why I had those, but I’m assuming they were Christmas-related)
  5. A Camp Fire Girls 6-years charm
  6. The B-1 Bomber (Unusual, yes, but my Dad was an engineer and a pilot and his company made some navigational components for the B-1. He was always going to California on business and he must have brought this charm back from one of his trips.)
  7. An ice skate – I loved figure skating.
  8. A tall ship, probably the USS Constitution. The bicentennial in 1976 was a very big deal in Massachusetts. The tall ships visit to Boston was a part of it.
  9. A baton (I loved twirling and being a majorette in high school)
  10. A tennis racket and ball (I had forgotten, but I was quite serious about tennis for several years. I made it to the club finals in singles one summer. I played on the high school team for a year or two.)
  11. A starfish – I loved the beach. (I ill-advisedly took a starfish home with me one time and that thing reeked like hell for months. It was probably still alive and I didn’t realize it. Poor starfish.)
  12. Mickey Mouse – I was one of those very lucky kids in the 70s whose parents took them to Disneyland.
  13. A heart with my birthstone in it
  14. Another Camp Fire Girls charm – my mom was a leader of our group
  15. The Eiffel Tower (I hadn’t been to Paris back then, but I must’ve liked the idea. I sure did love it later on in life.)
  16. A saguaro 🌵 cactus that says Tucson. I had an aunt and six cousins that lived out West. My grandmother would periodically move out there to help them.
  17. The last one is a bit of a mystery. Maybe it’s supposed to be a bicycle. I loved riding my bike. But it looks a bit more like a moped. I remember seeing mopeds a lot on our visits to Nantucket and Block Island, but people were constantly getting seriously injured on them. I don’t think my parents ever let us ride them, so let’s just go with bicycle for that one.

The King of Cruel Nicknames

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

What’s the story behind your nickname?

I wasn’t going to respond to this prompt, but then thoughtful posts by Singing Gecko and Books by Asher got me thinking.

Growing up in the 70s, kids (mostly boys) were constantly coming up with cruel nicknames for classmates, usually other boys. However, girls were not always spared. A couple of boys decided to call me “Popeye” in 5th or 6th grade because of my large eyes. I was so upset about it. I cried and cried. I think my mother finally intervened and spoke to a teacher (which was not her usual style), after the typical advice given to girls back then did not work: “They’re teasing you because they LIKE you” (worst advice ever!)

These memories made me think of the question Kamala Harris has been posing: What kind of a country do we want to be? It’s actually a great question.

Do we want to go back to the time when casual bullying, based on appearance/race/sexual orientation flowed like water from the tap? (If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you know what I’m talking about.) Or do we want to live in a country where differences are celebrated and everyone feels included? DEI (short for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) should not be used as a slur. And it makes me sick that it’s being used that way against Harris.

I honestly think the cruelty is the point with Trump and his followers.

Image from Pexels

Alka-Seltzer

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?
View all responses

This prompt took me straight to FOOD. Maybe it’s because I just listened to “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy—the bestselling memoir about a child star with an abusive mother and a really major eating disorder.

Having it all can mean the entire pint of ice cream, the whole row of Oreos, the full bag of chips. And yes, sadly, it is attainable.

Not to make light of eating disorders, but do my fellow GenXers remember those ubiquitous Alka-Seltzer ads? Before the famous “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle, there was this guy (and his long-suffering wife) saying “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever taken an Alka-Seltzer. They say it’s for “upset stomach and headache,” which sounds like code for a hangover. Did Madison Avenue intend for adults to read between the lines? Have you ever taken an Alka-Seltzer? And if so, was it because you were hung?

Jennette McCurdy (right) and her iCarly co-stars. Her award-winning memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” has sold over 2 million copies and been translated into ten foreign languages.

Guilt-inducing dolls

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you have any collections?
View all responses

As a kid, I had numerous collections—shells, rocks, stamps, glass animals, and dolls…lots of dolls.

I’ve purged the attic of all my old collections (I think), including my vinyl record albums. (That one was sad, but they were warped and I don’t own a turntable anymore.)

The last collection to go was the dolls. I had a few specialty dolls, along with a large collection of Madame Alexander dolls, which were very popular gifts for girls in the 70s. I loved their pretty costumes representing the nations of the world. These weren’t dolls you played with (like Barbie), they were meant to be displayed and admired. They lived on a shelf in my room. Of course, I did play with them sometimes, but I felt badly for doing so. Thinking back, I already felt enough pressure to be perfect and not commit “sins” (as defined by the Catholic Church), so I really didn’t need those dolls tempting me too!

In the end, they were basically worthless. Even though they were in good shape (with their original boxes), a doll dealer gave me less than $50 for the whole lot. I should have played with them all along.

They sat on the dining room table for about a week, creeping out my husband, before I sold them.

The child bride doll (talk about creepy!) was the one I played with the most.
I’m pretty sure some of these costumes would be considered stereotypical or even racist now. You can’t see them in the photo, but the Dutch girl had real wooden clogs. And the Scottish girl had bright green eyes like emeralds. Spain was cool with her black veil. The Indian doll had a red dot on her forehead.

Related post:

I’d rather laugh with the sinners

No good choices

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments
Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
View all responses

When I was growing up in the 70s, there were not many exciting female book characters. There was Pippi Longstocking, Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, Heidi, Jo March from Little Women, and the dutiful daughters of The Little House on the Prairie series.

I wasn’t a tomboy like Jo or a sleuth like Nancy, and I didn’t want to be a nurse like Cherry, or be motherless like Pippi or Heidi. And the prairie sisters (though I loved them) had far too many chores.

That leaves all the princesses, witches and bitches, plus the occasional fun nanny, and a fairy or two.

Ugh. No good choices here.

Honestly, maybe Tinkerbell is the best choice. At least she could fly and was a bit naughty – when she wasn’t in her cage.